od Devil condition when a
little fable like yours wouldn't leave it a single Presbyterian,
Baptist, Unitarian, Episcopalian, Methodist, or Millerite paying
subscriber, while all the deadheads would stick to it and abuse it
in the denominational newspapers!"

But the shorter MS. had been only a brief diversion. Mark Twain was
bowling along at a book and a play. The book was Tom Sawyer, as
already mentioned, and the play a dramatization from The Gilded Age.
Clemens had all along intended to dramatize the story of Colonel
Sellers, and was one day thunderstruck to receive word from
California that a San Francisco dramatist had appropriated his
character in a play written for John T. Raymond. Clemens had taken
out dramatic copyright on the book, and immediately stopped the
performance by telegraph. A correspondence between the author and
the dramatist followed, leading to a friendly arrangement by which
the latter agreed to dispose of his version to Mark Twain. A good
deal of discussion from time to time having arisen over the
authorship of the Sellers play, as presented by Raymond, certain
among the letters that follow may be found of special interest.
Meanwhile we find Clemens writing to Dr. John Brown, of Edinburgh,
on these matters and events in general. The book MS., which he
mentions as having put aside, was not touched again for nearly a
year.

*****

To Dr. John Brown, in Edinburgh:

QUARRY FARM, NEAR ELMIRA, N. Y.

Sept. 4, 1874.

DEAR FRIEND,--I have been writing fifty pages of manuscript a day, on
an average, for sometime now, on a book (a story) and consequently
have been so wrapped up in it and so dead to anything else, that I
have fallen mighty short in letter-writing. But night before last I
discovered that that day's chapter was a failure, in conception, moral
truth to nature, and execution--enough blemish to impair the excellence
of almost any chapter--and so I must burn up the day's work and do it
all over again. It was plain that I had worked myself out, pumped myself
dry. So I knocked off, and went to playing billiards for a change. I
haven't had an idea or a fancy for two days, now--an excellent time to
write to friends who have plenty of ideas and fancies of their own, and
so will prefer the offerings of th